Available files

The international trade in services by country tables contain detailed information on New Zealand's trade in services. Data is available by country for New Zealand's major trading partners and by a comprehensive list of service types.

Analysts can combine the ‘services by country’ data with overseas merchandise trade information for a picture of New Zealand's total international trade. Note that combining services data with merchandise trade data will not equal international trade as measured in the Balance of Payments. This is because we make adjustments (such as for changes of ownership) to merchandise trade data when it is included in the Balance of Payments.

Trade in services includes transactions where no physical product changes hands, for example a New Zealand lawyer who provides advice to a client overseas or an overseas head office charging a management fee to its New Zealand branch.

Tables are for June years, starting from the year ended June 2006, which is when detailed country data became available from a change in the quarterly International Trade in Services and Royalties Survey.

Download the tables from 'Available files' above. If you have problems viewing the files, see Opening files and PDFs.

Methodology for estimating travel, transportation, insurance, and government services

Commercial services are collected in the International Trade in Services and Royalties Survey, which collects detailed country information for exports and imports of around 55 different service types.

However, it does not collect data by country for travel, transportation, insurance, and government services, so this is estimated.

Here is a brief explanation of the methodology used for these estimations.

Exports of personal travel services are estimated using a combination of International Visitors Survey data, and visitor arrival figures.

Exports of education travel services are estimated using student numbers by country data from the Ministry of Education's Export Education Levy.

Imports of travel services are estimated using a combination of data from the 2004 Survey of Returned Travellers, and short-term resident departure figures.

Exports of transportation services are estimated by adding together data from passenger, freight, and other transportation services.

Passenger transportation services data is provided by airlines based in countries where tickets were sold.

Freight services are estimated using merchandise trade data – the importer pays the freight on goods ordered, so freight is proportionally assigned to countries importing goods from New Zealand.

Other transportation service exports are based on data from non-resident airlines and shipping companies that incur expenses (such as landing rights or port fees) while in New Zealand. This data is collected through our quarterly transportation surveys.

Imports of transportation services are estimated in a similar way to exports, by adding separately estimated data from passenger, freight, and other transportation services.

Passenger transportation services are estimated based on the country where the airline transporting passengers is a resident. For example, any tickets purchased for Qantas flights by New Zealand residents are considered imports of passenger transportation services from Australia.

Freight services are estimated using merchandise trade data – freight expenditure is proportionally allocated based on the country that goods are imported from.

Freight insurance is estimated in a similar way to freight transportation services. The importer of a good will pay the freight and insurance costs associated with that good, so freight insurance services by country are allocated according to proportions of imports/exports by country from merchandise trade data.

Non-life insurance is collected by country in our quarterly insurance surveys, and is combined with freight data for a total picture of insurance by country.

Government services by country is estimated using foreign embassy locations, as well as long-term migration figures.

Any expenses that a New Zealand embassy incurs abroad are treated as imports of government services, while expenses incurred by foreign embassies in New Zealand are treated as exports of government services.

Immigration fees received by the government were allocated to countries based on the number of long-term migrants arriving from each country.